Introduction

It has been fifteen years since Études Inuit Studies last published an issue devoted exclusively to the region of Chukotka and its inhabitants. Even if one may view Chukotka as “a marginal area of the Inuit world,” as Yvon Csonka, guest editor of this last issue, suggested, knowledge of this region and its dynamics is still necessary for a better understanding of this world and, more generally, the Arctic and its inhabitants, both indigenous and non-indigenous. Since the last special issue on Chukotka, numerous anthropological, historical, archeological, and linguistic studies of this region have been published. Chukotka never ceases to change, nor does the daily life of its people. Although the population density of Chukotka is low—there are fewer than 50,000 inhabitants on a territory of 720,000 km², which makes it one and a half-time as large as Yukon—Chukotka displays great population diversity. Indigenous people are in the minority (25 to 30% of the population), but their proportion has been increasing since the end of the Soviet period. During the 1990s, many non-indigenous people left the region, as the special salary granted to northern inhabitants (in Russian, severnye nadbavki) was no longer high enough to compensate for the post-Soviet economic crisis and its dire consequences. Mobility was augmented when settlements that were viewed as unprofitable were simply closed down, as was the case with the town of Iul’tin (Iul’tin district) in 1995, the town of Ureliki (Provideniya district) in 2000, and the town of Shakhtërskii (Anadyr district) in 2008. In short, the turmoil of post-Soviet times has led a number of members of Indigenous communities to leave villages for urban centres, where those leaving the region had left some empty housing and where the “quality of life” was higher—that is, where there were more jobs, better salaries, more consumer goods, better schools, and diverse cultural activities for children. In the 2000s, new migrants came from central Russia (which is called, locally, materik, “the continent”), especially from the Volga region (Kalmykia and Mari El Republic). They took up positions as border guards, doctors, teachers, and school principals. With all of these comings and goings, the population of Chukotka has remained fairly stable over the last decade. Villages have a strong indigenous majority, but they also show great diversity. Ethnic categories used for statistical purposes are problematic; but, even if imprecise, they still give some insight into different communities. According to the 2010 census, the indigenous population includes circa 12,800 Chukchi, after whom the region is named, circa 1,500 Yupik, about 1,400 Even, and 900 Chuvan. According to this same source, the inhabitants who are classified as newcomers (priezzhie) are mainly Russians (about 25,000) and Ukrainians (about 2,900), though there are also a few representatives of other nationalities, including Tatars (451), Azerbaijanis (107), Armenians (105), Uzbeks (79), and Kazakhs (70). Given the subject matter of this journal and the research interests of the contributors to this issue, emphasis falls on the indigenous people of Chukotka. Located at the extreme northeast of Russia, Chukotka might be seen as a kind of bridge between Asia and America, as it is located in the former but shares characteristics with the latter. The two main subsistence strategies that characterize indigenous activities in the circumpolar world—sea-mammal hunting and reindeer herding—overlap in Chukotka. Sea-mammal hunting predominates in the American Arctic and Greenland, while reindeer herding is largely restricted to Eurasia. Attemps to introduce reindeer herding among the indigenous people of North America have ended, for the most part, in failure (Laugrand 2021). In Chukotka, reindeer herding is restricted largely to the tundra Chukchi, whereas …